shale

See also: shalë

EnglishEdit

English Wikipedia has an article on:

shale

EtymologyEdit

From Middle English schale (“shell, husk; scale”), from Old English sċealu (“shell, husk, pod”), from Proto-Germanic *skalō (compare West Frisian skaal (“dish”), Dutch schaal (“shell”), schalie (“shale”), German Schale (“husk, pod”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to split, cut”) (compare Lithuanian skalà (“splinter”), Old Church Slavonic скала (skala, “rock, stone”), Polish skała (“rock”), Albanian halë (“fish bone, splinter”), Sanskrit कल (kalá, “small part”)), from to split, cleave (compare Hittite [script needed] (iškalla, “to tear apart, slit open”), Lithuanian skélti (“to split”), Ancient Greek σκάλλω (skállō, “to hoe, harrow”)). Doublet of scale. See also shell.

PronunciationEdit

IPA^(key): /ʃeɪl/
Rhymes: -eɪl
- Audio (UK) (file)

NounEdit

Shale fragments of Marcellus Shale in talus

shale (countable and uncountable, plural shales)

A shell or husk; a cod or pod.
- c. 1610s, George Chapman, Batrachomyomachia
  the green shales of a bean
(geology) A fine-grained sedimentary rock of a thin, laminated, and often friable, structure.
- 2007 March 23, Patricia Leigh Brown, “The Window Box Gets Some Tough Competition”, in New York Times‎^[1]:
  As on all large green roofs, the soil is not dirt exactly but a gravel-like growing medium of granulated pumice, shales, clays and other minerals.

Usage notesEdit

Before the mid-19th century, the terms shale, slate and schist were not sharply distinguished. Shales that are subject to heat and pressure alter into slate, then schist and finally to gneiss.